Creation Science Store

Living Fossils

"Living
fossils" are plants or animals that closely resemble species known from
fossils. Many of those listed below were considered extinct and only known
through fossil evidence, but were later discovered to still be alive.

It is presumed by evolutionists that fossils are much older than
is correct due to a failure of the scientific community to recognize the
occurrence of the Biblical
global deluge. Based on an incorrect naturalistic assumption, the
stratified layers are believe to have accumulated gradually, and are
separated by millions of years.

Animals, such as the dinosaurs, are believed
to have gone extinct 65 million years before humans lived on earth.
However, according to the Bible and its
chronology, all plants and animals were
created at the same point in time only a few thousand years ago. Most
naturalists find this thought laughable and yet many plants and animals
are alive today having changed very little from their relatives that
reportedly lived millions of years ago. In fact, most living fossils are
almost identical to their fossilized ancestors.

Living Fossils - Organisms Unchanged After
Millions of Years?

Alligators and Crocodiles
- The crocodile family is thought to have lived 230 million years ago and
remains virtually unchanged since that time.

Coelacanth - Dates back 400 million years. The Coelacanth fossil pictured
at right pre-dates the dinosaurs by millions of years, and was once
thought to have gone extinct with them 65 million years ago until it was
discovered alive and well in 1938.

Salamander Origins Pegged To Asia National Geographic News 3/28/2001. A recent fossil find
in China was dated to 150 mya, and is virtually unchanged from what we
find living today in the neighborhood swamp.

Sturgeon is claimed to be 250
million years old, and living since the time of the dinosaurs.

Niles Eldredge, Curator, American Museum Of Natural History, under the
heading "Living Fossils", in his book, FOSSILS, 1991.

"...there seems to have been almost no change in
any part we can compare between the living organism and its fossilized
progenitors of the remote geological past. Living fossils embody the
theme of evolutionary stability to an extreme degree. ....We have not
completely solved the riddle of living to an extreme degree. ....We have
not completely solved the riddle of living fossils. " p.101, 108

"...were thought to have been extinct by the end
of the Middle Devonian [385 MYA]. Modern Neopilina species, however,
were dredged from the deep oceans in the 1950's..." p.101

"There are also numerous organisms, in the
present day fauna and flora, which can be regarded as living fossils;
one of the best known among them is Neopilina, the only living
representative of a class of mollusks...thought to have been extinct for
350 million years before 1957, when Neopilina was caught off the coast
of Costa Rica." , p.78

"The Gingko biloba is the sole surviving species
of a very old group of gymnosperms which died out 100 million years
ago." PREHISTORIC ATLAS, 1982, p.78

"Off the coast of southern Africa, in the winter
of 1938, a fishing boat called The Nerine dragged from the Indian Ocean
near the Chalumna River a fish thought to be extinct for 70 million
years. The fish was a coelacanth, an animal that thrived concurrently
with dinosaurs..." From bookcover.

"The first members of this group appeared some
424 million years ago in the Silurian and look quite like the modern
forms. The last fossils became extinct about 50 million years ago." p.72

"This species was widespread and reasonably
common in the Pliocene of North America... The tree was thought to be
extinct worldwide until living specimens were found in central China in
1945." p.72

Sue Rigby, British Geological Survey, Nature Vol.363, p.209, 3/18/93

"All paleontologist dream of finding a 'living
fossil.' Noel Dilly, it seems has done so... As graptolites are arguably
the most important zone fossils of the Lower Palaeozoic (570-360 million
years before the present), this is far from an esoteric issue."

"Living fossil" discovered in SW China Experts recently discovered
around 1200 Chinese Hynobiidaes in Guiding county Southwest of China's
Guizhou province. These are a type of amphibian species around 300 million
years old that once used to live in the dinosaur period. People's Daily
Online. July 21, 2006

Salamander Origins Pegged To Asia National Geographic News 3/28/2001. A recent fossil find
in China was dated to 150 mya, and is virtually unchanged from what we
find living today in the neighborhood swamp.